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23/04/25/0158205 story

This NASA Telescope Has Discovered 329 New Exoplanets in Just Five Years

posted by hubie on Wednesday April 26, @02:45AM   

upstart writes:

This NASA Telescope Has Discovered 329 New Exoplanets In Just Five Years - SlashGear:

One of the biggest areas of research in astronomy right now is the discovery of exoplanets, or planets outside our solar system. With over 5,000 exoplanets known and more being discovered every month, you might think that this field is well-established — but in fact, it's rather recent, with the study of exoplanets only really taking off in the last decade or so. A big part of the explosion of exoplanet studies has been new tools that allow scientists to discover these far-off worlds more readily than ever before.

The new generation of exoplanet-hunting tools arguably began with the launch of the (now retired) Kepler Space Telescope in 2009, which ceased operations in 2018. But the baton was picked up by subsequent instruments, like NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, also known as TESS. Launched in 2018, NASA recently released some figures for TESS's achievements from its first five years in space. In this time, TESS has discovered an impressive 329 new exoplanets, as well as discovering thousands more candidate exoplanets.

[...] TESS uses an exoplanet detection method called the transit method. This is where you look at the brightness of a given star over time. If there is a planet orbiting that star when it passes between us and the star (called a transit), the star's brightness will dip very slightly. If you observe that dip in brightness at regular intervals, you can work out whether there is a planet there and how quickly it orbits that star. The amount by which the brightness dips can also help give information on things like the planet's size or orbit too.

To see these dips in brightness, though, you need to observe the star in question at several different points. First, you need to see the star at its usual brightness, then during the transit, then after the transit. And scientists like to observe these transits multiple times so they can be sure that what they are seeing is definitely due to the presence of a planet and not another factor. That's why TESS gathers so much data — because it needs to observe lots of stars and see them at multiple points in time to know whether they have planets orbiting them.

[...] TESS has already completed its two-year primary mission and is now on its extended mission, but it continues to operate well so we can expect it to continue discovering many more exoplanets in the years to come.

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• It doesn't seem like a lot It doesn't seem like a lot (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26, @03:45AM (2 children)

  by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26, @03:45AM (#1303194)

  The Kepler space telescope also discovered thousands of exoplanet candidates and TESS is covering 400 times more sky.

  • Re:It doesn't seem like a lot (Score: 3, Touché) by janrinok on Wednesday April 26, @06:15AM

    by janrinok (52) on Wednesday April 26, @06:15AM (#1303205) Journal

    I accept your point however, my eyes cover a huge swath of the sky but they have never discovered an exoplanet. The 2 things aren't necessarily related.

    Parent

  • Re:It doesn't seem like a lot (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26, @11:35AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26, @11:35AM (#1303243)

    Here's a nice brief summary [nasa.gov] of the differences between the two.

    Also [nasa.gov]:

    NASA's Kepler Mission was, during its 4 year prime mission from 2009-2013, a statistical transit survey designed to determine the frequency of Earth-sized planets around other stars. Kepler revealed thousands of exoplanets orbiting stars in its 115 square degree field-of view, which covered about 0.25 percent of the sky. While Kepler was revolutionary in its finding that Earth-to-Neptune-sized planets are common, the bulk of the stars in the Kepler field lie at distances of hundreds to thousands of parsecs, making it difficult to obtain ground-based follow-up observations for many systems.

    The TESS Mission is designed to survey over 85% of the sky (an area of sky 400 times larger than covered by Kepler) to search for planets around nearby stars (within ~200 light years). TESS stars are typically 30-100 times brighter than those surveyed by the Kepler satellite. Planets detected around these stars are therefore far easier to characterize with follow-up observations, resulting in refined measurements of planet masses, sizes, densities, and atmospheric properties.

    Parent